


cardboard castles, shoestring rope

by sysupportgroup



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Attempt at Humor, Curses, Five Times, M/M, Pining, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 10:45:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15928829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sysupportgroup/pseuds/sysupportgroup
Summary: For your average run-of-the-mill Academy student, Wonwoo gets cursed an awful lot.





	cardboard castles, shoestring rope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historiologies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/gifts).



> because you deserve fic catsus <3

“Hi, how can I help - “

“You look like a hamster.”

Soonyoung blinks, confused. His cheeks puff out like -

“The ones with seeds in their cheeks.”

 _Fuck_. Wonwoo clamps his hand over his mouth and mutters a few choice swear words under his breath as storm clouds roll over Soonyoung’s face. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. He takes a few cautionary steps back, standing just outside the threshold of Soonyoung’s room-cum-office-cum-workspace. It’s where he operates out of apparently, signalled by the massive neon letters scrolling across the top of the door: _HOSHI - you get cursed, we can reverse!_

Coincidentally, it’s also where he sleeps and keeps his stuff. As in... his dorm room.

Wonwoo’s not entirely sure if this is legal by Academy policy.

“Are you saying I’m fat?” The other boy gets up indignantly from where he was sprawling out on his bed, previously staring at his laptop screen with heart eyes. He doesn’t look so happy now though, mouth twisted to the side in a tight frown as he pulls himself up to a sitting position. “Because that’s probably not what you wanna say to someone you’re gonna _pay_ to feed you possibly poisonous things. At least, that’s what I’m assuming you’re here for.”

“ _No_.” Wonwoo chokes out, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t think you’re fat.”

And he doesn’t and it’s true but he figures he has enough self-control to stop at that, even though it’s not quite the extent of his thoughts.

He thanks the stars that Jeonghan’s petty ass hadn’t hit him with a tricky TMI spell instead of the truth curse the older had been unable to take off, resulting in his current situation. He’d always been much better at the theory side, Wonwoo supposes. He doesn’t want to imagine how badly this could’ve gone if he was compelled to word-vomit everything that crossed his mind at the sight of Soonyoung’s face.

Like the fact that the sight of Soonyoung’s face makes him want to throw up butterflies, live ones that’d envelop the room with their paper wings, beating all in a flutter in time with his heart.

Like the fact that sometimes, read all the time, he just wants to _bite_ Soonyoung’s cheeks though exactly which ones is negotiable.

Like the fact that he’s been half in love with Soonyoung for what feels like an agonising forever, just a shitty loop of infatuation-obsession-denial ad infinitum ever since they first sat next to each other in Spellcasting 1A.

 

(Geez, it’s almost embarrassing how quickly Wonwoo fell. If time magic were legal, he might be tempted to wind back all the way back to first year and tell his stick-like freshman self to actually set an alarm for the first lecture, not just rely on Bohyuk’s early-riser clatter. Because of course, that would be the day that Bohyuk chose to sleep in right till noon. Wonwoo had instead been jolted awake by his mother when she had come into his room to drop off his clean laundry - only to shriek his ear off when she found him still wrapped in his sheets.

 _Magic can only do so much_ , the familiar primary school lesson echoed miserably in his mind as he was forced to sprint for the last bus of the hour, legging it out of the house in a pair of jeans and his worn pyjama shirt, _we are still but slaves to the strict administrative wrath of public transport schedules._ At least he’d had shoes on, albeit feet only half-stuffed into them. Despite his best efforts, he’d arrived to campus ten minutes past the designated start time. Unacquainted with the grounds and being self-confessed utterly shit at right-way charms, it had taken him a further fifteen minutes to locate the right building and lecture hall. Trying to be sneaky had done him no good; the shifting of the heavy rusted bolt and creak of the old oaken doors had given him away before he’d even stepped foot into the hall. Bowing repeatedly in the vague direction of the professor, he had slid into the first available seat in a flurry of gangly limbs and muttered apologies to his seatmate.

“Bad morning?”

“You think?” Wonwoo snorted, concentrating on pulling his notepad and a pen out, “Did I miss much?”

“Syllabus stuff.” His seatmate informed him quietly, seemingly amused at Wonwoo’s struggles, “Aims of the course, assignment weightings, attendance requirements - that stuff. It’s all on the portal though.”

“ _Charming_ .” Wonwoo grumbled and his seatmate burst into bubbles of laughter, sudden and bright. He looked up and suddenly, he felt breathless for a whole different reason. Eyes alive with mirth, there was something about his seatmate’s presence that made Wonwoo’s heart stumble over a beat (though a contributing cause, he conceded, may be that damningly long expanse of pale shoulder exposed under a loose tee). Just his luck, he bemoaned, he had to sit next to a pretty person ( _who laughed at his pun_!) whilst still covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and wearing his old frames that make him squint unattractively, the ones with the temperamental blurriness from when Wonwoo had been an upstart kid and thought one highschool elective in Class C handy charms made him an expert at fixing shit.

“Good one.” His seatmate’s snickers died away under his breath, training his eyes back on his laptop under the weighty glare of the professor in their direction. _God_ , Wonwoo groaned to himself and his pen fell involuntarily from his grasp, _even his side profile is pretty._

There wasn’t been much said between them for the rest of the lecture, the professor deciding to launch right into the course material after all the administrative shit. Wonwoo, never having been the best at this subject, scrawled as fast as he can to keep up, a whole-brain task.

“I’ll see you next week?” Wonwoo ventured, a little shy, when the lecture finished up and everyone was cramming their stuff into their bags, hall filled with conversations picked up and ones barely begun. “I’m Wonwoo, by the way. Jeon Wonwoo.”

“Kwon Soonyoung,” the other boy grinned back at him and Wonwoo’s heart tripped again, sprawling over itself and tangled in its own arteries and veins.

That’s when the first butterflies came, dormant caterpillars lining the innards of his stomach bursting out of cocoons with wet wings and iron will.

To this day, they still haven’t left.)

 

Soonyoung hums suspiciously and crawls across his bed to the edge, swinging his legs over and stalking right up into Wonwoo’s personal bubble.

“You better not,” he sniffs, tilting his chin up into his best attempt at a challenging sneer, “otherwise I’ll kick you right out of my room right now.” He pauses, remembering something, “And I’d still charge for consultation!”

They’re so close. The butterflies are aflutter.

“I wanna throw up.” Wonwoo blurts out and wants to melt into the doorframe. He struggles to take it back but can’t, nothing coming out when he unhinges his jaw. Magic is strict like that: the truth is the truth.

It’s like seeing shutters come down with a clean snap, Soonyoung’s lips turn downwards and he exhales sharply, eyes narrowing. Universal signal for a 'Congratulations, You Fucked Up!'. The mood in the room has taken a sour turn and Wonwoo wishes he was good enough to conjure a gag for himself.

“Are you under an insult-everyone-I-see curse or something?” He asks curtly and Wonwoo can tell that he’s one wrongly timed truth away from being turned out the door and probably forcefully removed by Soonyoung’s necromancer-looking roommate. “Or is that just your natural personality.”

“I… can usually control myself better.” Wonwoo picks through his words carefully before his hindbrain can take control, “But my friend hexed me with a truth-telling curse.”

It had been petty but then again, anything involving Jeonghan usually is.

Soonyoung’s jaw drops open and Wonwoo expects him to ask why, preparing his words carefully to regale him with the story of how he incurred Jeonghan’s wrath over three missing juice packets. Instead though…

“Shit, so you really _do_ want to throw up?”

It’s almost funny how quickly the other scurries away, darting around his messy room to uncover an empty bowl of ramyun under a pile of loose leaf paper and clothes. He shoves it right into Wonwoo’s stomach, looking a little green himself.

“Vom in there please.” He squeaks and steers Wonwoo backwards, just enough so that he’s not crossing over into the threshold of Soonyoung’s room anymore. “I seriously just cleaned in here.”

“You cleaned in there?” Wonwoo says incredulously, holding the bowl limply, forgetting his resolve to try _not_ to insult his longest-lasting crush to his face. In his defence though, the room resembles a hurricane’s aftermath; he’d have an easier time believing that Junhui is actually an evil wizard intent on raising a cat army to conquer the world.

“Just yesterday.” Soonyoung puffs up, proud, and Wonwoo wills himself to not say anything in response.

He elects to change the subject instead.

“I was told that you freelance in curse breaking.” He says carefully, “And that you’ve got a pretty high success rate - Chan, uh Lee Chan, referred me.”

“Oh Channie!” Soonyoung lights up in a way that he didn’t when Wonwoo had first knocked on his room’s door. He supposes perhaps it was a little too much to expect the other to remember him from two years ago but it’s a dent in his pride anyways. The ache in his chest gets a touch harder to ignore. “He’s a brat but we all love him around here. Y’know, I cursed this heckler who interrupted his dance showcase with boils!”

He sounds so cheery about that that Wonwoo momentarily forgets that doing that is sort of not allowed.

“Minghao - that’s my roomie who showed you in - convinced me to make them burst after a week though.”

Oh? Wonwoo arches an eyebrow, silently surprised. A kind necromancer, an exception to the stereotype? He wouldn’t have pegged Soonyoung’s mullet-bearing roommate as the sort.

“Yeah,” Soonyoung continues chirpily, “with semen - to add that bit of extra humiliation y’know? He actually wanted to do something of his own but he can get a little… intense. So I convinced him to let me deal with it!” He chuckles like a fond uncle indulging a spoiled niece, “That guy really got off easy though,” he claps his hands together in thought, pursing his lips, “Minghao can be pretty scary… He doesn’t usually hold back when it comes to people messing with his friends.”

Wonwoo suddenly finds himself with a colder sweatier tighter grip on the edges of the ramyun bowl, realising his precarious position. He’s suddenly very aware of the open door next to Soonyoung’s room i.e. the one Minghao had retreated into after leading him in. It’s not that he’s _scared_ per se, it’s just that his thoughts haven’t been articulated in the best way so far; statements though true, badly-phrased and badly timed. Logically, it’s just a matter of time before something unbidden slips out and Soonyoung sics his roommate and their voodoo shit on him. Additionally, he realises in horror when his gaze drifts down to the gape of Soonyoung’s loose v-neck, lips on the verge of loosening, his thoughts aren’t usually the most pure when it comes to Soonyoung.

Under a truth spell, he’s terrified the filthier-leaning ones will spill out unbidden.

The butterflies are starting to come up, not quite in a cloud anymore and more like a mangled pulpy mess of legs and drippy wings choking him up.

He shudders and swallows, sudden urge to flee ingraining itself into his bones.

“How much to lift the curse,” he croaks out, “please.”

Soonyoung studies him intently, scanning his slightly hunched figure from head to toe before darting back into his room and zooming around from bed to desk to shelf to floor. At one point, he crawls to look for something under his bed and Wonwoo’s eyes find themselves drawn straight to his ass, clad in some very fitting ripped jeans. Minghao emerges from his room at that point though and Wonwoo whips his gaze away in a fit of panic, training them on the dried up soup remnants on the bottom of the bowl Soonyoung had given him. There’s a lip print on the side that taunts him and he hopes, more than ever, that he can at least control his silence by clamping down as hard as possible. Soonyoung returns after a solid five minutes of vague muttering and _oh fuck where did I put it_ ’s and hands him a pouch, a satisfied glow about him.

“Mash that all up in a blender, food processor, mortar and pestle if you’re traditional, whatever. Drink the paste and you should be fine in a couple of hours.” Soonyoung instructs him as Wonwoo peers into the pouch, not recognising much inside apart from some herbs and maybe a thorax. He’s probably lucky that Soonyoung didn’t give him one of the more revolting remedies he probably knows; they’d learnt about ones with cow’s lung and chips of ivory in class before. Maybe he cares. _Or_ , the pessimistic side of him offers, _he’s just too broke for that_. _No amateur spellcaster can fit ivory chips into their operational budget._ _Financially unfeasible._

“That’ll be ₩90,000.” Soonyoung chirps and holds out his hand.

There goes his food money for the next week, Wonwoo mourns as he digs out his wallet and places the notes begrudgingly into Soonyoung’s palm. Their smallness and squishiness does very little to soften the blow of money leaving him but it does give him something new to fantasise about the next time Jihoon leaves him alone in their dorm for the night.

He leaves in the wake of a closed door and Minghao’s weighty stare, clutching the pouch and the memory of Soonyoung’s hamster cheeks to his chest as tight as he can, chanting the truths he’d been bottling up under his breath as he scuttles off.

_I like you, I like you, I like you._

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this is weak but hey, more chapters to come later!!
> 
> title from cardboard castles by watsky


End file.
